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So last night, I meant to write another Thailand post and share our pictures from Phuket.
Instead, Cam and I ended up watching a two hour documentary about the Amish on PBS.
Random, I know.
We are actually both big fans of watching documentaries and we also don’t have cable TV anymore.
We do have an antenna for our TV and so we can watch stuff on broadcast channels/PBS.
Aka Downtown Abbey and Sherlock (which Cam is obsessed with right now).
Hence the title of this post 🙂
I saw a preview for this feature on the Amish during Downton Abbey on Sunday and actually marked my calendar to watch it. (Like I said, NERDY…but I’m fine with it) It’s an episode of the PBS series American Experience (and I think it originally aired almost two years ago now), and I thought it was super interesting. I know that there are a few different shows on various networks right now about the Amish as there seems to be this intense fascination with their way of life, as well as those that decide to abandon it. Which I totally understand. As someone who has my phone in my hand pretty much 75% of the day, it’s really hard to wrap my mind around how people can just willing choose to reject modern convenience. However, what I appreciated about this feature on PBS is that it didn’t aim to sensationalize anything, rather it just portrayed this group of people for who they are.
Growing up in Michigan, I had some early exposure to this way of life; my grandpa and my aunt and uncle on my dad’s side lived in the central part of the state where there was quite a large Amish population. When we’d go to visit them, it wasn’t uncommon to see horse-driven buggies on the road or Amish people out selling quilts or other handmade items. I’ll admit, many of their beliefs seem very arbitrary to me, like how they can ride in a car but they can’t actually drive the car, and other things like that. However, I can also see some positives to their way of life as well. I thought this documentary was really thought-provoking, particularly the idea of how America, especially in the past 100 years, has been very focused on the importance of “self”, whereas the Amish choose to reject that idea and focus on their community and it’s just a totally different perspective of viewing your life.
Here’s a preview, if you’re interested…
Also, I totally didn’t mean for this post to come off as “Oh Cam and I are so cultured, we watch PBS and only watch educational television for fun!” Ha! I just thought that it was really interesting and I wanted to post something today since I never did get around to those Thailand pictures.
You can watch the entire episode of American Experience ‘The Amish’ here.
PS: I am linking up with Shanna for Random Wednesday because I’m pretty sure this is one of my most random posts ever. Happy hump day y’all.